Peg Steely Dan Guitar Lesson + Tutorial | MOST ACCURATE LESSON ONLINE

Peg Steely Dan Guitar Lesson + Tutorial | MOST ACCURATE LESSON ONLINE

Hey friend Jon MacLennan here and in this video I want to share with you how I play Peg as recorded by Steely Dan. Now this is a brilliant song that has one of the most common Steely Dan chords in it. I'm gonna break it all down for you step-by-step.

There's four parts but keep this in mind that these are advanced chords and this is advanced harmony, it's almost like playing a jazz standard. The brilliant part for me with Steely Dan was they were able to take all this incredible music and amazing chord changes but then write a pop song that people could just sing along with and I think that there's very few artists that could actually pull this off. Perhaps people like Stevie Wonder would be another person who could do it but let's get straight into it.

We're going to start off with the intro progression now this just a pattern it starts on a Gmaj9 and I'm playing starting on the fifth string 10, 9, 11, 10. These are going to be whole notes we're gonna go [Music] then walk it down. Okay so all this is, is a pattern we're starting on that Gmaj9 and then what you do is you move these two fingers down one fret so keep those there your middle and your index and then these two fingers actually trade strings so you should end up on an F#7#9. So that's going to be 9, 8, 9, 10 and then we repeat that pattern down two frets at a time.

Walk it all the way down so it's Gmaj9, F#7#9, Fmaj9, E7#9, Ebmaj9, D7#9 then we kick into this groove we go  [Music].

This is a great jam here we're going to start out with some kind of some different voicings here, Cmaj7 here's how I play this. So I'm playing the note C there on the fifth fret of the third string, then I grab the B on the fourth fret of the third string, e on the second string fifth fret, and then G on the first string third fret.

Now muting of course the fourth and sixth strings. Then there's this chord. And this is a tricky chord to name. As I mentioned Steely Dan used this chord all the time, I'm playing the second fret of the fifth string, second fret of the third string, then third fret of the second string, and third fret of the first string.

See here the way I think about this is I've got a G chord here I've got the notes g b and d and then I've got the A added in so I call it a G(add9)/B or you could call it a G+2/B. So it's C Major seven to Gadd9/B.

We're in the key of G it's kind of like a four to a one so all together [Music].

So we start on that C Major seven and we go to the Gadd9/B and we actually playe four bars of that figure. Then we take it up to the four chord and then back down.

So it's actually a blues and this is one of the things that I loved about Steely Dan is that they were always re-harmonizing 12 Bar Blues progressions.

You're in the key of G and that would be the I chord here and then the IV chord here then when we get to the last four bars we would bring in the V, down to the IV down to the I just like a typical 12 Bar Blues and the way Steely Dan does it in this song is genius.

From there we move on to the chorus and the chorus actually starts on the same progression but we're gonna mix it up on the second half of it and this is where they sing Peg here's what it sounds like.

Here we're starting on that Cmaj7 to the Gadd9/B then we go to Am11. This is the fifth fret of the low E skip the fifth string and then go five, five, three. Same rhythm but this time move it up to an E7su4, that's basically just an open low E you can mute the fifth string then seven, seven, five or you could play it you get this parallel sound there it's beautiful. Then from there we change it up.

Now the next part gets a little complicated. Here we've got basically this chord. It's that same chord that we were playing in the blues figure. Here we're doing it with an A with a C# in the bass. So you could do it here with the thumb nine, skip the fifth string, then nine, nine, ten.

Then to C6 this is the eighth fret the low E string, then mute the fifth string, ten, nine, ten. Then you go to a G6 which is ten, nine, nine, eight, starting on the fifth string, and then F#7, nine, eight, nine, seven, [Music] so that would be like this [Music] now you could just play this if you want an easier part or with the bass notes.

Then back to the figure. So here's the entire chorus played as one piece again the lyric cue here is Peg. [Music] 

So that's the chorus now there is one other little interlude that comes in and this is just a short little phrase. It's gonna go like this [Music] and then that leads us actually back to the intro to restart just like how he kicked off the song.

So what I played here was F#m7 [Music]. So that's a tricky chord there nine, seven, six, five, just on those middle strings you'd really play any you do F#m7, like that if that's easier. But this kind of sound is like the recording.

So that's F#m7 to Bm7 to Em7 to Bm7 to Cmaj7. Like this [Music]

Take your time with those four main sections, and one of the things that I think is so cool to remember about this song is that verse is just a 12 Bar Blues but the harmony is taken to the moon.

There are some incredible chord changes in there that are definitely not common to the blues.

Happy Playing! 

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